Tehran received 46 millimeters of rainfall in the first 50 days of the autumn season, which shows a 300% increase compared to the 11mm of rain that fell in the corresponding period last year, said the managing director of Tehran Province Water and Wastewater Company on Tuesday.
“We had a good start going into the current water year (began Sept. 23). However, the total volume of water in the five dams near the capital is close to 554 million cubic meters, which is still 150 mcm less than the amount in dams in the last water year,” ILNA quoted Mohammadreza Bakhtiari as saying.
Tehran experienced unprecedented decline in precipitation in the last water year, which caused the amount of water inflow into the five dams (Karaj, Latyan, Taleqan, Lar and Mamlou) to drop drastically. The deficit consequently led to not only occasional blackouts in some parts of Tehran in summer, because hydroelectric dams could not operate normally, but also water outage in Shahriar and Andisheh satellite towns southwest of Tehran.
According to the Iran Meteorological Organization, higher precipitation is expected in the coming weeks, which can help reduce the huge water deficit seen in unusually extended periods.
Pointing to injudicious consumption of water in the capital, Bakhtiari said the amount of potable water consumed annually in Tehran Province alone exceeds 1.4 billion cubic meters, accounting for almost 20% of the total potable water consumption in the country of 80 million people.
“In normal conditions, 70% of water in the province comes from surface water and 30% is groundwater. But in the dry years 55% comes from surface and 45% underground,” he said, calling on households to rethink their high consumption patterns -- a serious concern of environmentalists, socio-economic experts and agro specialists pleading for advanced irrigation systems.
